Mr. Richardson was waiting in Paris for despatches, when Mr. Overweg and I reached Tunis, by way of Philippeville and Bona, on the 15th of December, 1849; and having, through the kind interference of Mr. Ferrier, the British vice-consul, been allowed to enter the town after six days’ quarantine, we began immediately to provide ourselves with articles of dress, while in the meantime we took most interesting daily rides to the site of ancient Carthage. Having procured many useful articles for our journey, and having found a servant, the son of a freed slave from Gober, we left Tunis on the 30th of December, and passed the first night in Hammám el Enf. Early next morning we followed the charming route by Krumbália, which presents a no less vivid specimen of the beauty and natural fertility of the Tunisian country than of the desolate state to which it is at present reduced. We then passed the fine gardens of Turki, a narrow spot of cultivation in a wide desolate plain of the finest soil; and leaving el Khwín to our right, we reached el Arbʿain.
Both these places enjoy a peculiar celebrity with the natives. El Khwín is said to have been once a populous place; but nearly all its inhabitants were destroyed by a spring of bituminous water, which according to tradition, afterwards disappeared. El Arbʿain, the locality of the “forty” martyrs, is a holy place; and ʿAli, our muleteer, in his pious zeal, took up a handful of the sacred earth and sprinkled it over us. It is a most picturesque spot. Keeping then along the wild plain covered with a thick underwood of myrtle, we beheld in the distance the highly picturesque and beautiful Mount Zaghwán, the Holy Mountain of the ancient inhabitants, which rose in a majestic form; and we at length reached Bir el buwíta, “the well of the little closet,” at one o’clock in the afternoon. The “little closet,” however, had given place to a most decent-looking whitewashed khán, where we took up our quarters in a clean room. But our buoyant spirits did not allow us long repose; and a quarter before eleven at night we were again on our mules.
I shall never forget this, the last night of the year 1849, which opened to us a new era with many ordeals, and by our endurance of which we were to render ourselves worthy of success. There were, besides ourselves, our servants, and our two muleteers, four horsemen of the Bey, and three natives from Jirbi. When midnight came my fellow traveller and I saluted the new year with enthusiasm, and with a cordial shake of the hand wished each other joy. Our Mohammedan companions were greatly pleased when they were informed of the reason of our congratulating each other, and wished us all possible success for the new year. We had also reason to be pleased with them; for by their not inharmonious songs they relieved the fatigue of a long, sleepless, and excessively cold night.
Having made a short halt under the olive-trees at the side of the dilapidated town of Herkla, and taken a morsel of bread, we moved on with our poor animals without interruption till half an hour after noon, when we reached the funduk (or caravanserai) Sidi Bú Jʿafer, near Súsa, where we took up our quarters, in order to be able to start again at night, the gates of the town being kept shut till morning. Starting before three o’clock in the morning, we were exactly twelve hours in reaching el Jem, with the famous Castle of the Prophetess, still one of the most splendid monuments of Roman greatness, overhanging the most shabby hovels of Mohammedan indifference. On the way we had a fine view, towards the west, of the picturesque Jebel Trutsa, along the foot of which I had passed on my former wanderings, and of the wide, out-stretching Jebel Useleet.
Another ride of twelve hours brought us, on the 3rd of January, 1850, to Sfákes, where we were obliged to take up our quarters in the town, as our land-journey was here at an end, and we were to procure a vessel to carry us either direct to Tripoli, or to some other point on the opposite side of the Lesser Syrtis. The journey by land is not only expensive, particularly by people who are encumbered with a good deal of luggage, as we then were, and very long and tedious, but is also very unsafe, as I found from experience on my former journey. The island of Jirbi, which forms the natural station of the maritime intercourse between the regency of Tunis and that of Tripoli, had been put under the strictest rules of quarantine, rather from political considerations than from those of health, all intercourse with the mainland having been cut off. It was therefore with great difficulty that we succeeded in hiring a “gáreb” to carry us to Zwára, in which we embarked in the forenoon of Saturday the 5th of January.
During our two days’ stay in Sfákes we made the acquaintance of a Jew calling himself Baránes, but who is in truth the Jew servant named Jacob who accompanied Denham and Clapperton, and is several times mentioned in the narrative of those enterprising travellers as self-conceited and stubborn; yet he seems to be rather a clever fellow, and in some way or other contrives to be on the best terms with the governor. He communicated to us many anecdotes of the former expedition, and, among other things, a very mysterious history of a Danish traveller in disguise whom they met in Bórnu coming all the way from Dar-Fúr through Wadaï. There is not the least mention of such a meeting in the journal of the expedition, nor has such an achievement of a European traveller ever been heard of; and I can scarcely believe the truth of this story, though the Jew was quite positive about it.
The vessel in which we embarked was as miserable as it could be, there being only a small low cabin as high as a dog-kennel, and measuring, in its greatest width, from six to seven feet, where I and my companion were to pass the night. We thought that a run of forty-eight hours, at the utmost, would carry us across the gulf; but the winds in the Lesser Syrtis are extremely uncertain, and sometimes so violent that a little vessel is obliged to run along the coast. At first we went on tolerably well; but the wind soon became unfavourable, and in the evening we were obliged to cast anchor opposite Nekta, and, to our despair, were kept there till the afternoon of Tuesday, when at length we were enabled to go forward in our frail little shell, and reached Méheres—not Sidi Méheres, as it is generally called in the maps—in the darkness of night. Having made up our minds rather to risk anything than to be longer immured in such a desperate dungeon as our gáreb, we went on shore early on Wednesday morning with all our things, but were not able to conclude a bargain with some Bedouin of the tribe of the Léffet, who were watering their camels at the well.
The majestic ruins of a large castle, fortified at each corner with a round tower, give the place a picturesque appearance from the seaside. This castle is well known to be a structure of the time of Ibrahim the Aghlabite. In the midst of the ruins is a small mosque. But notwithstanding the ruinous state of the place, and the desolate condition of its plantations, there is still a little industry going on, consoling to the beholder in the midst of the devastation to which the fine province of Byzacium, once the garden of Carthage, is at present reduced. Several people were busily employed in the little marketplace making mats; and in the houses looms, weaving baracans, were seen in activity. But all around, the country presented a frightful scene of desolation, there being no object to divert the eye but the two apparently separate cones of Mount Wuedrán, far in the distance to the west, said to be very rich in sheep. The officer who is stationed here, and who showed us much kindness, furnishing us with some excellent red radishes of extraordinary size, the only luxury which the village affords, told us that not less than five hundred soldiers are quartered upon this part of the coast. On my former journey I had ample opportunity to observe how the Tunisian soldiery eat up the little which has been left to the peaceable inhabitants of this most beautiful, but most unfortunate country.
Having spent two days and two nights in this miserable place without being able to obtain camels, we resolved to try the sea once more, in the morning of the 11th, when the wind became northerly; but before the low-water allowed us to go on board, the wind again changed, so that, when we at length got under weigh in the afternoon, we could only move on with short tacks. But our captain, protected as he was by the Promontory of Méheres, dared to enter the open gulf. Quantities of large fish in a dying state, as is often the case in this shallow water when the wind has been high, were drifting round our boat. The sun was setting when we at length doubled the promontory of Kasr Unga, which we had already clearly distinguished on the 8th. However, we had now overcome the worst; and when on the following morning I emerged from our suffocating berth, I saw, to my great delight, that we were in the midst of the gulf, having left the coast far behind us. I now heard from our raïs that, instead of coasting as far as Tarf el má (“the border of the water”), a famous locality in the innermost corner of the Lesser Syrtis, which seems to preserve the memory of the former connection between the gulf and the great Sebkha or Shot el Kebír (the “palus Tritonis”), he had been so bold as to keep his little bark straight upon the channel of Jirbi.
Our voyage now became interesting; for while we were advancing at a fair rate, we had a charming view of the mountain-range, which in clear contours extended along in the distance behind the date-groves on the coast, seen only in faint outlines. The western part of the chain is very low, and forms almost a group apart, but after having been intersected by a gap or “gate,” the chain rises to greater elevation, being divided, as it would seem from hence, into three separate ranges enclosing fine valleys.
We had hoped to cross the difficult channel to-day; but the wind failing, we were obliged to anchor and await the daylight, for it is not possible to traverse the straits in the night, on account of their extreme shallowness. Even in the light of the following day, when we at length succeeded, our little bark, which drew only two or three feet, struck twice, and we had some trouble to get afloat again. On the conspicuous and elevated promontory the “Jurf,” or “Tarf el jurf,” stood in ancient times a temple of Venus, the hospitable goddess of the navigator. Here on my former journey I crossed with my horses over from the main to the Island of Jirbi, while from the water I had now a better opportunity of observing the picturesque character of the rugged promontory. After traversing the shallow basin or widening, we crossed the second narrowing, where the castles which defended the bridge or “kantara,” the “pons Zitha” of the Romans, now lie in ruins on the main as well as on the island, and greatly obstruct the passage, the difficulty of which has obtained celebrity from contests between Islam and Christianity in comparatively modern times.
Having passed safely through this difficult channel, we kept steadily on through the open sea; and doubling Rás Mʿamúra, near to which our captain had a little date-grove and was cheerfully saluted by his family and friends, we at length entered the harbour of Zarzís, late in the afternoon of Sunday, and with some trouble got all our luggage carried into the village, which is situated at some distance. For although we had the worst part of the land journey now before us, the border-district of the two regencies, with the unsafe state of which I was well acquainted from my former journey, and although we were insufficiently armed, we were disposed to endure anything rather than the imprisonment to which we were doomed in such a vessel as our Mohammed’s gáreb. I think, however, that this nine days’ sail between Sfákes and Zarzís, a distance of less than a hundred and twenty miles, was on the whole a very fair trial in the beginning of an undertaking the success of which was mainly dependent upon patience and resolute endurance. We were rather fortunate in not only soon obtaining tolerable quarters, but also in arranging without delay our departure for the following day, by hiring two horses and three camels.
Zarzís consists of five separate villages—Kasr Bú ʿAli, Kasr Mwanza, Kasr Welád Mohammed, Kasr Welád Sʿaid, and Kasr Zawíya; the Bedouin in the neighbourhood belong to the tribe of the Akára. The plantation also is formed into separate date-groves. The houses are in tolerable repair and neatly whitewashed; but the character of order and well-being is neutralised by a good many houses in decay. Near the place there are also some Roman ruins, especially a cistern of very great length; and at some distance is the site of Medinet Ziyán, of which I have given a description in the narrative of my former journey.
Besides the eight men attached to our five animals, we were joined here by four pilgrims and three Tripolitan traders; we thus made up a numerous body, armed with eight muskets, three blunderbusses, and fourteen pistols, besides several straight swords, and could venture upon the rather unsafe road to the south of the Lake of Bibán, though it would have been far more agreeable to have a few trustworthy people to rely on instead of these turbulent companions. Entering soon, behind the plantation of Zarzís, a long narrow sebkha, we were struck by the sterile and desolate character of the country, which was only interrupted by a few small depressed localities, where a little corn was cultivated. Keeping along this tract of country, we reached the north-western corner of the Lake of Bibán, or Bahéret el Bibán, after a little more than eight miles. This corner has even at the present day the common name of Khashm el kelb (the Dog’s Nose), while the former classical name of the whole lake, Sebákh el keláb, was only known to Tayyef, the more learned of my guides, who, without being questioned by me, observed that in former times towns and rich cornfields had been where the lake now is, but had been swallowed up by a sinking of the ground. The real basin has certainly nothing in common with a sebkha, which means a shallow hollow, incrusted with salt, which at times is dry and at others forms a pool; for it is a deep gulf or fiord of the sea, with which it is connected only by a narrow channel called Wád mtʿa el Bibán. The nature of a sebkha belongs at present only to its shores, chiefly to the locality called Makháda, which, indenting the country to a great distance, is sometimes very difficult to pass, and must be turned by a wide circuitous path, which is greatly feared on account of the neighbourhood of the Udérna, a tribe famous for its highway robberies. Having traversed the Makháda (which at present was dry) without any difficulty, we entered upon good arable soil, and encamped, after sunset, at about half a mile distance from a Bedouin encampment.
Starting from here the following day, we soon became aware that the country was not so thinly inhabited as we had thought; for numerous herds covered the rich pasture-grounds, while droves of gazelles, now and then, attested that the industry of man did not encroach here upon the freedom of the various orders of creation. Leaving the path near the ruins of a small building situated upon a hill, I went with Tayyef and the Khalífa to visit the ruins of a Roman station on the border of the Bahéra, which, under the name of el Medaina, has a great fame amongst the neighbouring tribes, but which, with a single exception, are of small extent and bad workmanship. This exception is the quay, which is not only of interest in itself, formed as it is of regularly hewn stones, in good repair, but of importance as an evident proof that the lake was much deeper in ancient times than it is now. Traversing from this spot the sebkha, which our companions had gone round, we soon overtook them, and kept over fine pasture-grounds called el Fehén, and further on, Súllub, passing, a little after noon, a group of ruins near the shore, called Kitfi el hamár. At two o’clock in the afternoon, we had directly on our right a slight slope which, according to the unanimous statement of our guides and companions, forms the frontier between the two regencies; and keeping along it we encamped an hour afterwards between the slope and the shore, which a little further on forms the deep gulf called Mirsá Buréka.
Starting at an early hour, we reached after a march of ten miles the ruins of a castle on the sea-shore, called Búrj el Melha, to which those of a small village, likewise built of hewn stone, are joined, while a long and imposing mole called el Míná juts out into the gulf. Four and a half miles further on we reached the conspicuous hill on the top of which is the chapel of the saint Sidi Sʿaid ben Salah, sometimes called Sidi Gházi, and venerated by such of the natives as are not attached to the Puritan sect of el Mádani, of which I shall speak hereafter. All our companions went there to say a short prayer. Here we left the shore, and, having watered our animals near a well and passed the chapel of Sidi Sʿaid, close to which there are some ruins, we passed with expedition over fine meadows till we approached the plantation of Zowára, when, leaving Mr. Overweg and my people behind, I rode on with the Khalífa, in order to procure quarters from my former friend Sʿaid bu Semmín, who, as I had heard to my great satisfaction, had been restored to the government of that place. He had just on that very day returned from a visit of some length in the capital, and was delighted to see me again; but he was rather astonished when he heard that I was about to undertake a far more difficult and dangerous journey than my former one along the coast, in which he well knew that I had had a very narrow escape. However, he confided in my enterprising spirit and in the mercy of the Almighty, and thought if anybody was likely to do it, I was the man.
We had now behind us the most dreary part of our route, having entered a district which in ancient times numbered large and wealthy cities, among which Sabratha stands foremost, and which even in the present miserable state of the country is dotted with pleasant little date-groves, interrupted by fine pasture-grounds. In the westernmost part of this tract, however, with the exception of the plantation of Zowára, all the date-groves, as those of Rikdalíye, Jemíl, el Meshíah, and Jenán ben Síl, lie at a considerable distance from the coast, while the country near the sea is full of sebkhas, and very monotonous, till the traveller reaches a slight ridge of sand-hills about sixteen miles east from Zowára, which is the border between the dreary province of that government and a more favoured tract belonging to the government of Bú-ʿAjíla, and which lies a little distance inland. Most charming was the little plantation, of Kasr ʿalaiga, which exhibited traces of industry and improvement. Unfortunately our horses were too weak and too much fatigued to allow us to visit the sites either of Sabratha or Pontes. The ruins of Sabratha are properly called Kasr ʿalaiga, but the name has been applied to the whole neighbourhood; to the ancient Pontes seem to belong the ruins of Zowára eʾ sherkíyeh, which are considerable. Between them lies the pretty grove of Om el hallúf.
About four o’clock in the afternoon we traversed the charming little valley called Wady bú-harída, where we watered our horses; and then following the camels, and passing Asermán with its little plantation, which is bordered by a long and deep sebkha, we took up our quarters for the night in an Arab encampment, which was situated in the midst of the date-grove of ʿUkbah, and presented a most picturesque appearance, the large fires throwing a magic light upon the date-trees. But there are no roses without thorns: we were unfortunately persuaded to make ourselves comfortable in an Arab tent, as we had no tent of our own; and the enormous swarms of fleas not only disturbed our night’s rest, but followed us to Tripoli.
We had a long stretch the following day to reach the capital, which we were most anxious to accomplish, as we expected Mr. Richardson would have arrived before us in consequence of our own tedious journey; and having sent the Khalífa in advance to keep the gate open for us, we succeeded in reaching the town after an uninterrupted march of thirteen hours and a half, and were most kindly received by Mr. Crowe, Her Majesty’s consul-general, and the vice-consul Mr. Reade, with whom I was already acquainted. We were surprised to find that Mr. Richardson had not even yet been heard of, as we expected he would come direct by way of Malta. But he did not arrive till twelve days after. With the assistance of Mr. Reade, we had already finished a great deal of our preparations, and would have gladly gone on at once; but neither the boat, nor the instruments, nor the arms or tents had as yet arrived, and a great deal of patience was required. However, being lodged in the neat house of the former Austrian consul, close to the harbour, and which commands a charming prospect, our time passed rapidly by.
On the 25th of January Mr. Reade presented Mr. Overweg and me to Yezíd Bashá, the present governor, who received us with great kindness and good feeling. On the 29th we had a pleasant meeting with Mr. Frederic Warrington on his return from Ghadámes, whither he had accompanied Mr. Charles Dickson, who on the 1st of January had made his entry into that place as the first European agent and resident. Mr. F. Warrington is perhaps the most amiable possible specimen of an Arabianized European. To this gentleman, whose zeal in the objects of the expedition was beyond all praise, I must be allowed to pay my tribute as a friend. On setting out in 1850, he accompanied me as far as the Ghurián; and on my joyful return in 1855 he received me in Murzuk. By the charm of friendship he certainly contributed his share to my success.